Veil of Shadows
by Calvatron3000
Summary: Gideon Ravenor and his retinue have been sent to the Planet Archanon to find the source of a tainted narcotic that they believe may be the work of the Ruinous Powers. Patience Kys and Harlon Nayl have made planet-fall to investigate clan activity within the darkest corners of Hive City Despora hoping to find a lead. (I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it!)
1. Questions and Answers

**\- Prologue - **

Planet Archanon

Northern Latitudes

Continent known indigineously as 'Icerok'

Hive City Despora - East Quadrant

Mega-Hab East-6

89th Floor

Urdin Fraust was dying a slow and painful death. He had pleaded with his captor repeatedly to be put out of his misery but she would not grant him that mercy. He was a scumbag, a murderer and a great deal many more things but most of all he was someone undeserving of a quick exit. Besides, she thought to herself, she was having too much fun. In an earlier outburst she had severed an artery in his leg when he had not been forthcoming. Crimson streaked the grimey walls and ceiling where his vitae had been pumped out of the fresh wound. He would have bled out in minutes if she had let him but she kept the artery clamped with her telekinesis.

She had encouraged him in other ways, too. With a slice here, a fractured bone there, and a crushed testicle for good measure, she had slowly eeked some answers out of him: names of informants, cache locations, brevity codewords and the like. It was nothing that they hadn't already gathered from intercepted transmissions and previous interrogations, but confirmation from another source was valuable none-the-less.

She looked down uncaringly at her subject and smiled cruelly to herself. There was nothing better than laying the hurt on someone who prayed on the weak and needy for a living. Perks of the job, she had decided a while ago. His broken body lay in a heap on the dusty floor. The ragged overalls he wore were stained with oil, blood and piss. His shaved scalp was inked with clan markings, expletives and depictions of depravity.

She looked around at her handiwork. The cooling bodies of Urdin's former clan-members littered the floor around him. Smoke still rose from messy exit wounds which she had inflicted with her hand-cannon. The other thugs had been used as pin-cushions for her kines-blades: lightweight steel knives she propelled with her telekinesis or dual-wielded like daggers when she wanted to get up close. There were a dozen bodies in total, soon to be thirteen she reminded herself.

'They got it easy, you know?' She taunted him. She had only needed to incapacitate one of the clanners for questioning and as an agent of justice it had been her duty, and pleasure, to despatch the others. 'What do you think they'll do to you?' She continued, 'when they find out that you broke under interrogation and gave up the goods?' She had his attention now. He said nothing, but she didn't need to be a psyker to know that he was overcome with dread. 'But if you tell me who your boss is I'll spare you having to be skinned alive by your friends when they show up.' She tapped the hand-cannon holstered to her leg mockingly, offering an alternative.

'Who are you, witch?' He shouted between coughs of foamy blood. His hands and feet were bound behind his back with razor-wire. He writhed and thrashed in protest like a caged animal. 'Who the frak are you?' He bleated again. She thought about telling him her name, what did it matter? He was going to die soon anyway and It was just a name. It wasn't even her real name, but it was the one that she had taken upon leaving her old life and being recruited. It was the only one that her team knew her by. Sometimes she had nearly forgotten her true name herself.

Urdin Fraust had been surprisingly resilient to her methods of interrogation and even though he had given her what she wanted in the end, and they always did, she felt that she owed him something for the defense he had put up. She couldn't bring herself to acknowledge it as respect, but she was intrigued to say the least. He was still a scumbag though and she would make him suffer.

'It's not _me_ you should be worried about,' she replied ominously. 'It's who I represent, it's what I am a part of that should concern you more.' She let that sink in and tapped in a key-sequence to her wrist cogitator and raised her arm at Urdin. He winced and closed his eyes, expecting to be immolated by a flame-thrower hidden in her wrist guard but instead it projected a stream of light towards him. A small icon appeared within the light and began rotating slowly in the air between them. The holograph illuminated the room in soft green light. It was no bigger than a side-arm but had the stopping power of an Emperor-Class Titan. It was her Seal of Office. The Symbol of a shadowy organisation whose entire inception was out of the necessity to root out and destroy evil in it's most heinous forms. It had spelled the doom of millions before Urdin and it would do so for many more after him.

The Rosette of the Imperial Inquisition.

She needn't have said more after that. It's symbology had the desired effect as she saw his bladder give way for the second time in an hour. She smiled wickedly to herself. Perks of the job indeed, she thought.

She left Urdin to contemplate his mortality as she decided to search the room. It was the largest room on this floor, she had concluded that it was probably an old common area for the inhabitants before the clan had taken over. There was a doorway in each of the four walls, but three of them had been sealed up allowing the clanners to bottle-neck any interlopers through the one entrance. They had fashioned a barricade at the choke-point out of old furniture and sandbags and placed a heavy-stubber on top. It had been a smart move, she supposed, but a breach-charge and a pair of stun-grenades had allowed her to shift the odds in her favor.

Stained leather sofas formed a semi-circle at the room's center around a ruined pict-caster that had all but been picked clean of parts and wires. Sluggers, stubbers and auto-rifles were piled in crates against the walls. The worktop where the kitchen area was had been used to stash narcotics and the associated paraphernalia. Broken glass and shell-casings crunched under her feet as she explored. The stench of damp, cordite and human waste lingered in the air.

Side-stepping the corpses that she had made she found the remains of an antique mirror slumped against one of the grotty walls. In their take-over the clanners had stripped the once beautiful room of its character and personality but for some reason had left the heirloom more-or-less intact. Perhaps even they could appreciate a work of art, or maybe they enjoyed the vanity.

It was a full-length mirror framed by carved nalwood. The glass was specked with dried blood from the earlier melee and slightly cracked at the edges. She looked into the mirror. A tall and slender woman wrapped in a black body-glove stared back at her intently. Angular features and emerald green eyes were framed by short, jet-black hair. She felt exhausted, the tempo of the on-going investigation had taken it out of her, out of all of them, but she gave no sign of weakness on her hardened exterior.

She knelt down beside Urdin, making sure to avoid the pool of blood around him, and grabbed him by his grubby collar. She pulled his face closer to hers so that she could look him in the eye. His round face was a mess of scar tissue. 'Well?' She asked. He smiled a mouth of blackened and broken teeth. 'Go frak yourself, Witch!' He spat at her. Blood and saliva oozed out of his wretched mouth. She was going to reward him with a sternum punch when she felt a warm sensation in her chest.

She threw him back down and rose to her feet. The wraithbone necklace at her breast came to life with a soft blue glow.

\+ Patience, you need to move with haste. The clan are returning in large numbers, even more than you can handle. + It was her leader and employer, Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor. Like Patience, he was a proficient psyker, though of a much higher caliber. Even from their ship in orbit over Archanon he could still project his psykic abilities more effectively than she could in person. The wraithbone necklaces that her and the others wore amplified her psykic abilities and allowed her to communicate telepathically with them. This method of silent communication was essential for clandestine operations such as this.

\+ I've got everything that I'm going to get out of this fether, + she replied.

\+ Very well, tie up all loose ends and leave no trace of your presence. +

\+ I was going to leave him to the rats, it's what he deserves... +

\+ Did you show him your Rosette? +

\+ Yes, but he's bleeding out... +

\+ We can't take the risk of him surviving and alerting the rest of his clan. Our presence on Archanon must remain a closely guarded secret. +

\+ What about the corpses? It will be a bit of a give-away. +

\+ They will reason that it was a raid from a rival gang. Nayl is on the 84th floor and is on his way up to you, he has a guest with him. I want you to both extract with her in one piece via the service elevator on your floor. +

\+ Okay, meet up with Nayl, kill the bad guys, save the girl and extract via the service elevator. +

\+ Do what needs to be done. No loose ends, Patience. + He severed the link. It was an order that she would have to obey, putting her personal feelings aside, she knew that they couldn't risk to have their operation jeopardized. 'You're the boss,' she said to herself out loud. After all, secrecy was the Inquisition's greatest weapon.

Kys opened up her mind to Nayl. She found his wraithbone necklace amongst the miasma of souls occupying Mega-Hab East-6 and expressed a playfully mocking thought to him to get his attention. He sent back the equivalent of a psychic grunt, still uneasy about using telepathy as a non-psyker.

+You know it's rude to keep a girl waiting, Harlon? +

\+ It will be worth the wait, trust me. I hope that you're ready for this. I'm bringing the party with me. +

Kys could sense Nayl ascending the stairway to her floor along with the girl. Kys couldn't be specific about the number of clanners chasing them down the halls, but it was a sizable horde. The sense of blood-lust and borderline insanity was palpable amongst the mass of bodies. She decided that whatever she was going to do she would have to do fast.

She turned to face Urdin. He was pale and sweating profusely, his breathing was shallow and laboured. Patience gauged that he only had a few minutes left in him. 'Who... who are you talking to?' Urdin asked.

'The boss, well I _was_ talking to him, but not anymore,' she replied vaguely. Urdin looked puzzled and cursed. 'But you had your mouth closed... and you aren't wearing a comms-bead... how were you...?' He trailed off. She smiled and tapped the side of her head. 'Witch-craft,' she said with a grimmace and winked. He cursed again.

It was time to leave. Patience reached out with her mind and retrieved her two-dozen kines-blades from their victims. They hovered towards her and then orbitted her body slowly, one by one finding a home in various sheathes on her body-glove. It was quite a spectacle for any non-psyker, but to a telekine like Patience Kys it was childs play. The many brass casings that covered the floor from her hand-cannon were standard issue and nondescript, they could not be linked to any clandestine organisation so she left them where they were. There was only one more matter to take care of.

'So... what did he say?' Urdin managed after much effort. 'Your boss... what did he...'. She ignored him and drew her hand-cannon from her leg holster. The LED display above the hammer read 'empty' in flashing red digits. She ejected the spent magazine onto the floor and slammed a fresh one home. The LED display now projected the number '12' in neon-blue digits.

'What did he say?' Urdin screeched in desperation. Heavy foot-steps echoed up the stairway adjacent to the common area. Urdin's reinforcements were on their way and would be upon them any second. She chambered a round in her hand-cannon, thumbed off the safety and aimed it at his head. The cruel smile returned to her beautiful face.

'He said it's your lucky day.'


	2. Manhunt

His head exploded in a cloud of grey matter and skull fragments. Neloni yelped and shielded her face with the back of her hand to avoid being coated in gore. The green-eyed woman chortled darkly at her victim's demise and the bald man behind her simply grunted his approval. The headless corpse fell messily on the floor, vitae still spilling from his body.

They had been running for what had felt like an eternity. Neloni had wanted to stop and collapse out of exhaustion but they would not let her. To do so would have meant certain death, or much worse, she imagined. The thought of what would happen to her if was taken alive by the clan was enough to keep her running. She dismissed the thought with a shake of her head and forced her legs to keep moving.

The horde weren't far behind them. Their insane howls and curses echoed through the corridors behind them and filled her with terror. The only thing that had slowed the horde's advance was the torrent of gunfire that the bald man and the woman with the green eyes had unleashed at them. The booms from their weapons were deafening in the close confines of the corridors and caused her head to ring painfully. The air was thick with the smoke and stink of weapons discharge.

'Keep running!' The bald man had shouted forward at her as he stopped to turn around and fire another volley into their pursuers. The death-screams of three or four clanners confirmed that his shotgun rounds found their mark. Neloni glanced back over her shoulder momentarily to see the slain clanners trampled to a pulp under the mass of bodies chasing them. The woman with the green eyes had remained in the lead and fell any clanners in their way with precision shots.

'Who are you people?' Neloni had screeched whilst trying not to trip over the bloodied and twitching bodies left in the green-eyed woman's wake. They ignored her question and herded her onwards to what she hoped was safety.

A labyrinth of concrete corridors lined with rusted shutters, welded and boarded up doorways, pipes, valves and stairwells had passed her in a blur of browns and greys. Most of Mega-Hab East-6 had fallen into this state of disrepair. It had happened right before her eyes in the two long and miserable years that she had called it home.

_East-6_, or simply _6_, as many of its inhabitants came to refer to as, was home to thousands of men, women and children like her. Like most of _East-6_'s dwellers, she was too poor to afford even the most basic amenities or luxuries and had resigned to a life of low-skilled and menial labour in the many manufactorums or administratums.

It wasn't much of a life, she decided, but it was better than death or a life of servitude in the Imperial Guard, which often resulted in the latter anyway. It was a cold comfort, she reminded herself, but it is what made Neloni endure the rigours of living in Hive-City Despora.

Neloni had reasoned that whoever they were, and whatever they were a part of, they must have been Imperial. She saw no sign of the iconic Imperial Aquila on their persons but the quality of their equipment and their proficiency with weapons suggested that they had received military-grade training.

The green-eyed woman wielded small silver blades with grace and agility and was a sadist if Neloni had ever seen one. The bald-headed man was large and brutish and was undoubtedly the muscle of the operation. Whatever operation that was, she thought.

Feelings of bewilderment, mystification and apprehension bombarded her mind in equal measure when she regarded her peculiar rescuers. If indeed it was a rescue and not abduction.

Who on Holy Terra were these people? And what did they want with her? The questions troubled her greatly.

Neloni decided that it wasn't important to know who they were right now and focused on keeping pace with the woman leading her. She wrapped her hands around the necklace that her father had given her as a child. It had kept her protected since that day a long, long time ago. He had promised it would do so long as she never removed it. To do so would have left her vulnerable and, most importantly, would have disrespected the memory of her dead mother, he had told her. She prayed that it would continue to keep her safe for one more day.

Just keep running, your life depends on it, Neloni repeated to herself over and over.

'The service elevator is just up ahead!' Shouted the green-eyed woman.

Neloni sighed in relief as she vaulted over yet another slain clanner, trying not to slip on the viscera pooling around him.


	3. Stand-Off

Harlon Nayl's auto-shotgun spat death for the final time with a harsh bark and then clicked empty. The sound filled Nayl with trepidation and foreboding. He knew in an instant that the odds were about to shift against them.

The howling clanner charging him screamed hideously as he was gutted by the slug and landed in a heap a few feet from him. Steam rose from his entrails as they met the cold and damp air of the corridor.

Nayl and Kys had managed to escort the girl safely to the extraction point. It was a dead-end and with nowhere to run they had taken up defensive positions until their relief arrived. Flashing yellow lights flanked the huge chrome doors of the service elevator and bathed the surrounding area with an amber glow. With a whine of servos and motors they had summoned their means of escape from an unknown floor a few minutes earlier, but it had yet to appear.

Nayl quickly patted his plated body-glove for a spare drum-magazine. He found none, threw the emptied weapon to the ground and cursed loudly.

'I'm out!' He shouted across the hallway to Patience Kys. She was hunkered down a few meters opposite him behind the husk of a domestic servitor. A dozen utility limbs sprouted awkwardly from its rusted and bullet-riddled torso which had taken the brunt of the punishment. The decaying remains were all that separated her from the onslaught.

'Make every shot count,' Nayl urged her as he noticed a growing pile of spent magazines and brass casings at her feet. The bandolier strapped across her chest was empty save for a single remaining high-caliber clip.

'Shit's about to go sideways!' She called back at him as she unjammed a stoppage in her weapon. Nayl sensed a slight tremble in her normally-sanguine voice and knew the truth in it.

In his long career as a bounty hunter before joining Ravenor's retinue he had become acquainted with many unsavory and dangerous individuals, but to date he had never met anyone so murderous as Patience Kys. Her ability to take a life with indifference was only off-set by her dark beauty.

During his time as a gun-for-hire Nayl had reserved no qualms about killing outlaws for credits but Patience dispatched them as a matter of principle. He knew that her predatory persona, unquestionable allure and telekinetic abilities were why Ravenor had recruited her in the first place. She was an excellent operative and utilized each of her traits to equal effect when the circumstances required it.

Nayl knew that if she of all people was worried then he sure as hell should be, too.

Las-fire and tracer rounds cracked and whipped across the kill zone separating Kys from Nayl and the girl and thudded noisily against the reinforced elevator doors. The stench of cordite and scorched ozone lingered around them.

It was obvious to Nayl that the clanners were doped as they had abandoned any thought of self-preservation. The losses inflicted against them were massive and yet they would not relent. No matter how many they had slain there seemed to be two or more to take their place.

Silhouettes sprung from cover at the far end of the corridor from the trio, taking pot-shots and laying suppressive fire whilst others charged in a frenzy towards them wielding make-shift melee weapons.

Dozens of dead and dying clanners choked the length of the gloomy corridor. Broken weapons, smoking shell casings, shattered glass and narcotics paraphernalia cluttered the floor around the corpses. Sparks spat from overhead strip-lights that had been destroyed in the crossfire whilst punctured and rusted pipes lining the walls spilled their nauseous content onto the floor. The drab brown walls and threadbare ceiling was painted a sickly crimson with the gore ejected from the slain madmen.

Patience locked her bewitching green eyes with Nayl and nodded.

Things were about to go very wrong, very quickly, Nayl concurred with a grimace. Still, he decided, he had survived worse in his short and eventful employment in the Inquisition. If he was going to shuffle off of the mortal coil today he was going to be on his feet fighting.

He unsheathed an enforcers baton that he kept for last resorts and thumbed its activation stud. The baton came to life with a soft hum as electricity danced across it's forked tip. Kys loaded her last high-calibre magazine into her hand-cannon, tossed the empty bandolier to the floor and primed her weapon.

\+ Sir, we're hanging on by a thread here. We need that elevator now. + Nayl sent to Ravenor.

There was a slight pause and then he felt his wraithbone necklace energize as Ravenor had located him.

\+ I predict 4 minutes at most based on its rate of climb. The elevator was stalled at the 23rd floor when it fell into disuse. It has not been operated in years- +

\+ Can you not speed it the frak up? + Kys interrupted. She was nearly lying prone as her make-shift cover was being decimated by the incoming fire.

\+ It was designed for transporting heavy-goods between levels in its day. it's not going to be fast by any means. Be _patient_. + Ravenor replied.

'Unbelievable,' Patience said out loud to herself.

A smile formed on Nayl's bearded face. Patience caught his eye and shot him down with a look that would have toppled a Leman Russ.

_Don't you dare_, the glare screamed at him. She was right. Now was not the time for jokes. More importantly, Nayl knew better than to antagonize a telekine, least of all about her curious namesake.

\+ She's right, Boss, we'll be lucky to last another 2 minutes at this rate. + Nayl sent.

\+ You are both skilled combatants and it is why I sent you into the beasts maw. Trust in your training and each other. Is our guest in one piece? + Ravenor asked.

Nayl looked at the girl hiding behind him. She was a delicate, small-boned young woman. She wore the ragged and faded fatigues of a manufactorum worker that had grown too baggy for her from malnourishment. Nayl gauged by her appearance that she was over-worked and underfed like most Hive-City laborers. Her long auburn hair was tied in a messy knot above her head. Hazel eyes stared back at him in bewilderment as she clutched the shattered remains of the necklace she had been praying to.

The heirloom looked like a typical silver choker with a bright ruby at it's center. Small diamonds lined the ruby and twinkled innocently despite the madness unfolding around them. A stray stubber round had ricocheted off of the ceiling with a snap and hit her square in the chest earlier on, shattering the necklace into several pieces. What are the odds? Nayl had thought out loud with surprise.

'You okay, kid?' Nayl asked the girl.

'I've had better days,' she replied hastily.

'Me too. Do you have a name?'

'Ne...' She hesitated. 'Neloni. It's Neloni,' she said with a nod. She covered her head with her hands as a las-round disintegrated a pipe above her head and showered her and Nayl in sparks.

'Okay, Neloni, I'm Nayl and that's Patience.' He gestured across the hallway to his green-eyed companion. She had unsheathed several kines-blades and held them ready for a target to make itself known.

'We're going to get you out of here in a few minutes. Things are about to get real ugly for me and Patience but I need you stay hidden and make yourself as smaller target as possible. Can you do that for me?' He asked.

'Yes,' Neloni replied. Her voice was stricken with fear. Nayl couldn't blame her, they would be lucky if any of them survived the next few minutes.

'Hey, I'm sorry about your necklace. But it looks like your old man wasn't lying when he said that it would protect you!'.

Neloni managed a smile which quickly disappeared as she held the necklace fragments to her chest again. Tears formed in her disarming eyes.

\+ She's counting her blessings but otherwise unhurt. + Nayl replied to Ravenor.

\+ That is good news. You need to keep her that way. Do not let her fall into the clans possession whatever happens. +

What did Ravenor want with her so badly? Nayl wondered. He admitted to himself that there was something peculiar about Neloni but he couldn't say what.

\+ That will become clear with time. For now just keep yourselves and Neloni alive. + Ravenor ordered and then closed the link. Nayl had forgotten that communicating telepathically with Ravenor meant that his inner monologue was audible to him as well.

'Bloody psy-crap,' Nayl said out loud and shook his head.

Patience's hand-cannon boomed loudly for the last time and then fell silent. A misshapen silhouette in the distance blew into messy chunks and toppled over. She tossed her empty weapon to the ground and drew several more kines-blades into her other hand.

'Time to go and say hello,' she shouted across to Nayl with a grimace.

He turned to face Neloni who had brought her knees up to her chest and was hyperventilating. 'Stay out of sight!' He told her and nodded to Patience.

Nayl quickly glanced down the length of the corridor. Over the myriad of bloody corpses he could see the silhouettes of clanners preparing to launch a fresh assault. He couldn't tell exactly how many there were but he guessed that the numbers weren't in his favor.

'Let's go and earn our credits,' Nayl called.

'You never stopped being a bounty hunter did you, Nayl? _My_ services come free of charge.' Patience replied with a grin. She peered over the remnants of her cover waiting for a break in the wall of lead seperating them.

'If you're good at cracking skulls then don't do it for free!' He countered.

The almost deafening barrage of suppressive fire aimed at them ceased and was replaced by the howling war cries of the clanners about to rush them.

'Here they come!' Nayl announced. Neloni squirmed and began muttering a prayer to herself.

'Try and keep up old man,' Patience called mockingly and sprang from her cover. She unleashed a flurry of kines-blades and charged to meet the clanners head-on.

Nayl cranked up the voltage on his baton to a lethal level and followed in Patience's wake, hoping that they could at least hold them back long enough for the girl to escape.


End file.
